The courier meant what he said, and after a long, tortured beat, Ravenna nodded.
He stepped closer, warm brown eyes intent on hers. “What do they want with you?”
Ravenna stared at him, torn, the magic stirring her blood, making her pulse tick hard. She wanted to be free of this place, to return to the life she once knew. She had been prepared to claw her way back instead of risking Saturnino’s wrath, but now… What mattered to her more?
Her mortal life or her immortal soul?
It was an easier decision than she initially thought.
“I’m to free five Nightflame gemstones,” Ravenna said quietly. “I don’t know why, but I will endeavor to find out.”
“Five pietra magiche,” the courier said under his breath. “Five crates.”
“It will be no problem to fail in the task,” she continued. “I can’t chip away at the protective virgin stone encasing the gemstones. It’s near impossible.” She hesitated. “But you should know that if I fail, my life will be forfeit.”
The courier absorbed her words without a hint of emotion, but she had the uncanny sense that he was having an internal conversation with himself, quick turns of his mind. She was proven right when he said, “Magic responds to magic. Use yours.”
Her magic brought only death. “But it’s—”
“I know what it is and what you can do,” he said. “You have an affinity to the Nightflame. It happens sometimes to those who have a powerful witch ancestor.” He paused a beat. “Consider how the virgin stone protects its charge, how it’s alive with motive and reason, and begin from there.”
“Beginhow?” Ravenna pressed.
“I must consult with His Holiness to see his thoughts on the matter, but I trust he won’t want to lose you as a resource. Chip at the stone, a little at a time, until you hear from me again.” The courier backed away from her, his gaze never leaving her face. “Time for you to return to the palazzo. There will be someone inside who will work with you.”
Ravenna kept still, despite the hole at her feet becoming deeper and deeper. She’d never be able to crawl out. The mayhem inside her pleaded to be set free. “How will I know who they are?”
“They will make themselves known to you.” The courier impatiently turned from her, and Ravenna watched him leave as silently as he had arrived, a ghost drifting from one world and into the next, the dark shadows swallowing him whole. She slipped the letter back into the envelope, then tucked both into a hidden skirt pocket, reeling.
The long-living Pope Sixtus IV had written to her.
The courier had relayed her victory to His Holiness—bymagicalmeans. Nothing else made sense. How else would His Holiness have known about her, and so quickly? Raw emotion swirled through her body. The pope was famous for his hatred of all magic, and yet she had proof of his use of it.
But she would never be able to speak of it.
Excommunication was a death sentence she would not wish on anyone, not even on the Florentine guards who had locked up her brother. If Ravenna didn’t perform in a way His Holiness approved of, then no one in Volterra would be able to marry. Baptize their children. Receive their last rites.
And every single one of them would know it had been because ofher.
Her family would be ostracized, their good name torn apart.
They would lose their home. They would lose their inn.
Destitute. Scorned. Forsaken.
Ravenna curled her hands into fists. She was almost relieved to have gotten the message from His Holiness. Given what the Medici family had done to her town, to her brother, she did not mind. Given how Saturnino had threatened her life, she did not care about his downfall, or his family’s fall from grace.
In fact, she was beginning to look forward to it.
Saturnino dei Luni
Saturnino heard the sculptress swearing from the other side of the wooden door. It made him pause, struck by a curious sense of bemusement. He would have bet money that the sanctimonious sculptress had never uttered a foul word in her life. And he would have lost. Saturnino was rarely mistaken when it came to humans. But this human wasn’t as easy to pin down.
Ravenna swore again.
It was not the most auspicious start to the morning. He locked his jaw and opened the door, disappointment clinging to his skin like cold mist. Perhaps they had overestimated her talent, but then, they hadn’t found anyone else who both had a Nightflame affinityandwas a capable sculptor.
Finding another would take time and effort.
